Raina couldn't find suitable art for her Shadowrun character Rainagade, an elven street samurai. While she found a couple of pieces online that were nearly right, they overemphasised the character's chest.

Since I'm stuck at home, I offered to knock up a custom portrait in Poser, a 3D scene renderer I've been playing with for more than a decade.

The pieces of art Raina posted intitally gave some idea of what kind of costume and weapons she wanted her character to have. I knocked up a concept piece showing different ways we could customise the character.

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Rainagade Concept 01.jpg [ 1.42 MiB | Viewed 19245 times ]

Raina liked the costume and preferred the long-sleeved, black version. She wanted a Caucasian skin tone for the character, but not as pale as the first skin tone in the concept piece. She liked the bun hairstyle, and didn't express a preference on other examples.

I did some more playing around with skin tones and body types before creating the final image. Mostly they were digital doodles while I thought about what the final image would look like. I've ticked the doodles I ended up using.

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Sketches.jpg [ 484.96 KiB | Viewed 19245 times ]

I didn't show Raina the sketches. By the time I'd finished doodling I had a pretty clear idea of composition. I did, however, have difficulty creating a pose I liked. Eventually I googled "action poses" and found a series of pose sketches on deviantart. I used the gun pose I liked best as the basis for the final image.

A detailed reply will have to wait until I'm at home. But (a) I'd advise against shelling out for the pro version. Go for Poser 10 (less than $100 at the moment, I think) or Daz Studio (free). I didn't get the pro version until I'd been using poser for several years.

You get a good selection of models with Poser 10 (and pro). You can buy others. There are sources of free models. Antonia Polygon and My Michelle (female) and Apollo Maximus (male) are all excellent. There's a good site called Poser world which gives you unlimited downloads of more than 2000 models for an annual subscription of about $80. ShareCG have many freebies, as do Renderosity (who also sell stuff).

I think the Victoria 4 models and morphs I used in the Rainagade image cost me about $100 from Daz 3D. May be cheaper now - Daz models are a couple of generations on now.

You can make your own morphs, but my favourite software for doing that (Zbrush) is another $600. There are cheaper alternatives, even a (cumbersome) way of doing it inside Poser itself.

V4 Standard - $50 (model, standard map, Morphs++ - which are the morphs I used for Rainagade)

V4 Pro Bundle - $100 (includes morphs, several textures in different racial skin tones, and a selection of clothing and hairstyles).

The Michael 4 bundles are similarly priced.

The clothing I used for the image was Uzilite's Complicated Eve, which was $30 - Uzilite's stuff is expensive, but very well modelled and textured.

Links to other Poser/DAZ Studio content sites:

Poserworld - buy monthly or annual subscription, get unlimited access to their library. Modern content predominates, fair amount of historical, some fantasy and SF.Runtime DNA - small group of very skilled content providers have made this a leading content site. Plenty of fantasy and a reasonable amount of SF. Also very good with lighting packs, background props and plants.DAZ 3D - as well as its own free scene manager/renderer (DAZ Studio), many content proviuders sell Studio and Poser content through DAZ. Be careful that the content you buy matches the figures you have. Most of the product offered through DAZ will only fit DAZ figures (various generations of Michael, Victoria and Genesis). Genesis will only work in Poser by importing it through the free DSON importer. Other figures of generation 2-4 will work in Poser without a problem.Content Paradise - Poser's own store. Good for updastes, add-ons and new figures. Quality of other content is variable, but generally not great IMO.Renderosity - Large number of content makers offer wares here. All genres catered for. Quality can very. Large repository of free content (quality even more variable).Hivewire 3D - The free Dawn figure is a must for Poser 10/PP2014. Also has Lisa's botanicals and Ken Gilliland's Songbird Remix lines (plants and all kinds of birdlife).PowerFusion 3D - SF vehicles and backdrops. Some SF clothing.OnTarget 3D - Lots of military and SF models. Some freebies.Share CG - Huge repository of freebies.

TL;DR: neither Daz or Poser is a casual investment in time, and, unless you want a minor hobby to add to your RPG is probably not worth it.This is a full series of posts by Brawikikian. In my drive to incorporate more computer aided roleplaying elements into my life I have trialled Daz and Poser 10. I have, despite oodles of help from Barwickian, had a frustrating time. Poser and Daz suffer from being bitter rivals. There are numerous accounts of this online. From a user’s perspective the split is unfortunate. Poser offers an excellent posing and placing interface. Daz’s interface is clunky and awkward. Poser has little in the way of content; Daz has much. Once upon a time Daz produced content and Poser used it. Then Daz upgraded its interface to attempt to rival Poser’s. There now seams to be an uneasy stand off between the two. Daz has a good content download manager. It then scatters the content around its interface like a mad woman’s shit. Downloading content into Poser is gruelling and time consuming.Persevering with Daz I judge that in a few years it will be better. They seem very willing to help a new customer but suffer from, I suspect, being a small company. Poser is austere and aloof and is not welcoming to a new user. I will keep trying with both. If I have any success I will update this post.

I wrote a tutorial e couple of years ago explaining some of the shading and rendering techniques I use in Poser.

There is now a free Poser script, EZ Skin 2, which automatically sets up skin shader I explain in the tutorial; I use EZ SKin a lot nowadays. But I think it's useful for people to know what it's doing when you click the button.

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